Minecraft needs no introduction, everyone knows the all time best-selling video game where there are endless possibilities for you to build anything you can imagine. With the immense popularity of the game, comes demand for more merchandise, media, and more; and recently “A Minecraft Movie” Directed by Jared Hess was released.
Before getting into the actual movie, I want to point out something I noticed about the title, the use of “A” rather than “The”, insinuating how it’s just one of many different Minecraft experiences, which ties perfectly into Minecraft’s themes of endless possibilities. There is no linear plot or end goal, the journey depicted in the movie is just one of over 300 million, everyones is different.
“Based on the trailers I honestly wasn’t expecting the movie to be very serious,” Explained senior, Kennedi Sanchez.
“I mostly just expected it to be funny.”
Going into the movie, we are introduced to Steve, played by Jack Black, a boy who’s creativity was bound only by the world around him. He wanted to mine, he wanted to build, he wanted to explore, but in the small town of Chuglas, Idaho he couldn’t make these dreams come true. He grew up keeping all this creativity and imagination inside him, until one day at his boring office job he realized that he wasn’t a kid anymore, so he was finally free to explore.
As he explored an abandoned mine, he came across a strange glowing cube and a glass box, as he ventured deeper into the mineshaft he came across a strange portal, and when he combined the two pieces it opened and dragged him into the world of Minecraft, a place where he could fulfill his dreams, where his creativity knew no limits and the constraints of real life had no effect on him.
While Steve is stuck in the world of Minecraft, we’re given a short compilation of him building and adventuring before we’re introduced to our other main characters.
Off the bat, I thought it was a little odd how they just showed us everything; the entire thing was flat out narrated and showed to the audience rather than having us infer. This is, unfortunately, something that continues throughout the entire movie and it really breaks the sense of immersion that most movies have.
As we’re introduced to our other protagonists Henry, Natalie, Garrett, and Dawn, a group of four people from vastly different backgrounds, brought together by a series of unfortunate events that lead them all into the portal as well.
Again, when we’re introduced to each character we almost immediately are given their whole background, personality, and what kind of character they are.
Henry is an imaginative kid who’s bullied for his creativity and crazy inventions, Natalie is his sister who has to care for him after the passing of their mother but doesn’t understand that he’s independent and can do things on his own.
Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, a man who never got over the 80s, with his mullet and pink leather jacket, can’t seem to recover from his short success in his childhood as a wrestling video game champion. Still rocking his nickname and owning a store filled with his own memorabilia, he wants to be seen and loved by everyone like he once was, while being characterized by his ego and desire for validation or to prove he’s the “coolest”.
Then there’s Dawn, Henry and Natalie’s real estate agent with a fascination for animals. She keeps animals in her car, hoping to one day open a petting zoo.
And finally, there’s Steve.
Steve has been trapped in the world of Minecraft for a while now. He’s a man who’s finally able to express his inner child like he never has been before, an outgoing, creative guy who’s confidence leads to funny interactions between him and Garrett throughout the movie with them always trying to one up each other.
He knows all there is about the world of Minecraft, and is content with his life there, no responsibilities, no real life problems, just endless room for creativity. Steve acts as the group’s guide through the world and only hopes of returning to the normal world.
Overall, the characters are fairly static and surface-level, but I honestly enjoyed this simplicity.
For a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously, the funny characters such as Steve and Garrett mesh well with the other more serious characters like Natalie and Dawn, creating a well-developed dynamic. There’s Dawn teaching Natalie how to parent Henry, while Steve and Garrett act as mentors to Henry, who struggles with his confidence and lack of means to express his creativity.
Along with our main characters is the main antagonist of the movie, Malgosha.
Malgosha is an old, witch-like piglin woman with a hatred for creativity, her main goal is to obtain the cube that leads the group into the minecraft world in order for her to destroy the overworld and everything creative in it.
Piglins are pig-like humanoid creatures that come from the nether, a dimension of lava and fire void of all creativity where their kingdom lead by Malgosha resides.
Through their journey from the portal to the woodland mansion (where they can find the glass box they need to open the portal, as it was shattered during their first night), they encounter many different enemies such as zombies, skeletons, creepers, spiders, and even piglins along their way. Once they get there, they’re caught by evil villagers that live within the woodland mansion who capture their prey and force them to fight in their underground fighting ring.
Garrett is forced to fight a chicken jockey, which is a baby zombie riding on a chicken, and through his creative strategies he’s eventually able to beat it, and they escape.
Though the Woodland Mansion seemed like it would be a bigger part of the plot, the movie spent significantly more time on the journey there than they did in the mansion. I thought the journey there had a lot of fun moments, but it felt like the Woodland Mansion scene was kind of rushed. After getting what they needed, they immediately left and never really mentioned it again. For a part of the movie that seemed like the climax, it was pretty anticlimactic.
After leaving the mansion, the group makes their way back to the portal, but are met with Malgosha, who steals the cube they need to escape and opens the portal for herself, bringing her entire Piglin army to the overworld to take it over.
But fortunately, our group of humans planned for this, and built an army of Iron Golems to help fight.
In the end, they used teamwork to make their way to the top of the portal and break the crystal powering it, killing all of the Piglins, including Malgosha.
At this point, our main characters open the portal back to the real world, and you would expect them to all leave. Steve stays, as he seemed content with his life in the Minecraft world and expressed how he didn’t wish to go back yet because he “still had stuff to do”. But, on a whim, he ends up deciding to leave with them to return to the real world because with all of their newfound creativity, they all know that the real world won’t be as boring as it once was.
Overall, the movie was funny and extremely unserious, I can’t think of a point where it tried to take itself seriously, and I kind of liked that about it.
“As I expected, yes, the movie was really funny,” Again, CHHS student Kennedi Sanchez told us, “It was a little bit all over the place but it was enjoyable to watch!”
Minecraft isn’t a serious game, and I feel like if they tried too hard to make the movie serious it would’ve just ended up kind of boring, but there were a few things that I personally would’ve changed about it.
First of all, I didn’t really like how they flat out told us pretty much everything, any time something new was introduced it was immediately explained, even the characters and their entire personalities.
Second of all, it felt really short and the pacing felt off. As I touched on previously, there were some parts that just felt way too short for how important they were to the story, or felt too long or drawn out. The movie isn’t very long, clocking in at only an hour and forty minutes. I think they could have easily made it a two hour movie and fixed some of the pacing issues, or even just cut out or shorten some of the characters’ backgrounds, opting to show rather than tell, allowing for better immersion.
But, other than those small gripes, the movie was a pretty good experience, not particularly because it was “good” by critics’ standpoints, but because it was fun.
“I feel like the only reason the movie worked was because of the actors,” CHHS student, Gwen Goodwin explained, “they’re fun actors in a fun movie.”
